IPCC: “Inappropriate” to show the decline

One reviewer of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report specifically asked IPCC not to hide the decline. The reviewer stated very clearly:

Show the Briffa et al reconstruction through to its end; don’t stop in 1960. Then comment and deal with the “divergence problem” if you need to. Don’t cover up the divergence by truncating this graphic. This was done in IPCC TAR; this was misleading (comment ID #: 309-18)

The IPCC said that it would be “inappropriate to show recent section of Briffa et al. series“.

21 Comments

It would have been inappropriate to show the decline in the IPCC report. That’s because the IPCC isn’t about science. As Briffa wrote to Mann on April 29, 2007, “I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC , which were not always the same.” http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=794&filename=.txt

To me the most damning thing is that they’re willing to discuss the divergence (presumably, hidden away in an obscure paragraph), but they’re not willing to show it on the graph. In any normal research paper this would seem to be absurd – discussing data without showing the data itself… if you can legitimately do that, then why show any data at all?

Surely the only reason is that the graph is the only thing that policy-makers will ever look at. It must make the desired point, even if this means removing data which disagree with that point. Appalling! This is a reversal of the scientific process: the conclusions are dictating the data!

My graph (HadCET) exactly matches one on his page, to confirm we are looking at the same thing. I merely added a 30 day moving average and found that *his* 30 day moving average didn’t line up with the axis values properly. His axis on the left is also mismatched to the data a bit. Looking at the original data plot vs. his Hockey Stick shows how effective his “trick” really is.

I posted this in his moderated comments several days ago but but it hasn’t appeared.

The brief phrase “considered inappropriate” is exactly the kind of an “unjustified scream of a would-be authority” that should simply not be allowed in similar official scientific procedures.

If something is “inappropriate”, one has to explain why it is “inappropriate”. The adjective normally refers to etiquette, not to validity in science, so it’s questionable whether such adjectives should appear in the justification of anything that is supposed to be scientific. But if they appear, there should be an explanation.

Of course, most of us have a feeling what the real justification would be if it were “appropriate” to hear it: “it would reduce the readers’ hysteria and fear of a recent unprecedented warming.” Indeed, it probably would. And it should, too.

The reality is that the tree measurements really *do* show that there is nothing unprecedented going on, at least when it comes to the impact on living forms such as trees. Even if the temperature swings in the late 20th century were significantly higher than those in the past, the changes of tree rings are not unprecedented at all, and there may even have been an effective cooling seen in these data.

What matters economically is how life etc. will change. We see that it wasn’t changing much, so even if the thermometers were showing something detectably new, it’s clear that such a change wouldn’t be relevant for the things we care about.

So it’s very inappropriate – well, I really mean inconsistent and maybe dishonest – to combine graphs of different types.

Steve..once again well done…and if you need my vote to award you “The order of Canada” you have it…
All of this must be like winning the lottery…every question you may have had about the Team is now answered…fantastic..this is sweeping across the planet.

I don’t know why this hasn’t struck me until now, but be that as it may: Briffa was the rejecter of each of “one reviewer”‘s critiques, as shown above; AND, it is my understanding that Briffa was the lead author of that chapter of the AR (or at least one of the contributing authors). (So far, so good?) HOW CAN THAT BE? The “referee” of the critiques is one of the players in the contest?? Wouldn’t the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs like also to be the referee of the games his team plays? And this is supposed to pass as “science”? If indeed I am “so far, so good”, then this practice of the IPCC is unconscionable, scandalous (and I am standing by those words). I suppose that Pielke Sr. has already said this in one of his papers, but I’ve not read them (yet). Any referee for comments to any AR chapter HAS to be a totally disinterested party. I feel sad. (Please feel free to shoot me if what I say here is based on false assumptions, etc.)

[…] the Chapter 6 team also manipulated graphics, “hiding the decline,” even when one reviewer explicitly demanded that they show the graphic as it appeared in the original science. And finally, after keeping one skeptical paper out of the first two drafts of the report, as they […]